


Broken Compass

by okwallman



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Metaphors, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okwallman/pseuds/okwallman
Summary: Tommy can feel himself sinking.
Kudos: 13





	Broken Compass

“Things were just starting to work out,” Tommy had said to Arthur when the man came into the house with fresh rope marks on his neck, burning an ugly red and all scratchy. “And you choose to do this now?”

  


Arthur hadn’t replied.

  


Tommy had thought he was a coward, then. That Arthur was choosing the easy way out, that he wasn’t thinking, that he was blind not to see the bigger picture. They were going to be wealthy- they were mere steps away from it. They would have all the power and all the money they had ever wanted. They would have enough to feed the entirety of Birmingham for a week. So why would Arthur choose _that_ path, leaving behind unfinished deals and uncollected papers?

  


That night, when the curtains were drawn and his opium stock was out on his end table, Tommy had lain on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. A night like this was no stranger, but that night Tommy wasn’t focused on his shaking hands nor the droplets running down his face as his body convulsed. That night, Tommy let himself think again.

  


Was Arthur really missing the bigger picture? Was there a bigger picture _at all?_ The idea that Arthur was a coward for attempting to hang himself was dissipating and instead, the question of ‘If?’ was crawling in its place. So what if someone took their own life? It was selfish for those similar to Tommy, to leave a hungry family behind when you are the one who puts the bread on the table. But if Tommy ignored that circumstance... was fleeing really so bad?

  


In a world where living was a constant battle from which you reaped no rewards when you won- for men like _him._

  


Tommy’s sleep was restless that night, with unanswered questions in his head and a lessened fear of death.

  


——

  


Tommy lowers himself onto a chair, having trouble with his wobbly legs that refuse to stand still. His hands clench on the armrest as his eyeballs frantically move around in their sockets to take a look around the room. It is a true depiction of chaos: furniture in pieces on the hardwood floor, scattered pages of notebooks and books alike, sharp glass shards from a broken vase right next to Tommy’s chair...

  


Tommy’s eyes focus on a single glass shard. The blade-like tip glistens teasingly under the light of the chandelier, almost blindingly so. Tommy feels as though he’s being mocked. Everything around it slowly melts into each other, and all of the sudden, all Tommy can hear is his heart beating violently in and nearly out his chest.

  


It‘s deafening.

  


A blurred pale hand comes into view- short fingers splayed as they try to curl around the shard. The blue and purple veins that stand like stripe bruises are throbbing like they’re about to pop. Tommy leans over slightly to help the hand. If he can just reach it, if he can just pick it up, maybe he wouldn’t have to listen to that noise anymore, maybe he could just relax in sweet silence-

  


A sharp pain in his thumb brings him back to reality. 

  


Lifting up his hand, he stares at the bead-like blood on the tip of his thumb, leaking from a small cut. He breathes out and the sound of his heart is finally out of his ears. Tommy exhales shakily and leans back on the chair, fluttering his eyes closed.

  


In the silence of the room, the sound of a single drop resonates. He can’t let them rot in jail. He can get them out. Tommy has a task in hand. Tommy has a plan.

  


The familiarity keeps him up.

  


——

  


  


The familiarity doesn’t keep him up. Not for long.

  


He tosses and turns under the duvet, eyes wide like a frightened animal. He knows they are glazed over and that‘s why he cannot see a thing, but the part of his brain that holds that information is so far and so little that it‘s easier to focus on everything else.

  


He can’t stay in bed. Not now, when his son is in the hands of a pedophile. _Not ever._

  


He kicks the duvet off of himself, suddenly feeling dirty like he had rolled around in the earth after a rainy evening and then buried his face in the torso of a stray dog swarming with fleas. He scratches at his forearms and abdomen. Tommy knows that the shirt he’s wearing is made out of very light material and that’s one of the reasons he’s shivering so violently, but it makes him feel like he’s dry heaving. It’s so, _so heavy._

  


He can’t stand in one place for long without his legs threatening to give out, so he moves. He moves slowly, then quickly, then he starts to pace around in the room, breathing out from his nose swiftly and angrily. The grey sleeves of his jumper turn a violent red in the shapes of scratches as blood seeps out from desperately clawed out gashes. The first shatter is heard when he accidentally knocks into the bedside table in blind rage, and he yelps in pain.

  


He looks down at where he walked into it. His hipbone pulses, so he lifts up the hem of his jumper slightly. It’s taken a bright red colour and is jutting out. It makes him look sick. He lets go of the jumper.

  


For a second, he just stands in his place. He breathes in and out shakily and manually. When he finally looks at his trembling hand, it’s red all around and dripping.

  


The red spreads in his vision.

  


Before he knows it, Tommy’s screaming and kicking at everything in sight, furiously throwing glass and porcelain vases everywhere in the room. Hundreds of thousands of pounds lie shattered on the ground. Tommy’s faintly aware that he’s stepping all over everything while he turns and howls like a tornado, sweeping everything off of their place with no mercy. 

  


There is no remedy for the likes of him. He can shout and scream and destroy all he wants, but it doesn’t stop the very unwelcome, overwhelming guilt gnawing its way up his stomach and settling in his throat. Tommy’s this close to vomiting all the hate and mortification in him all over his expensive carpet.

  


He doesn’t want to open any doors for more. He can’t. If he does, he knows he’ll become weak. He isn’t a man who cries. He isn’t a man who wallows in his guilt. If he was, he’d be ten metres underground by now. He reminded himself every night- he was the foreman of a razor gang, therefore he had to show no weakness if he desired to keep his face where it was supposed to be. He didn’t have the privilege to be weak- neither in public nor in private.

  


When Tommy blinks, the red is replaced with golden brown. He stumbles towards his closet and bites back cries of pain as he steps into the sharp pieces of everything, grabbing his most favoured vest. Reaching into its pocket, he lets out a trembling whine of relief. The capsule of the lid is popped open and the contents are downed in one go.

  


It‘s only a few moments before he is off and floating.

  


——

  


  


Tommy feels odd that night. For the first time in forever, he doesn’t want to have a smoke despite his hands sweating because of how much his body is craving it. He doesn’t want drugs. He doesn’t want sex. He doesn’t want guns. He doesn’t want fights. He doesn’t want danger. He doesn’t want mines buried in the field his child plays around in.

 _“Fuck,”_ he thinks. _“Mines buried in the fucking field my kid plays in.”_

He doesn’t want any of the things he used to think brought him joy- or more accurately, adrenaline. When he looks back at it, an imagery pops up in his head. Thomas Shelby walking in a shallow turquoise sea, with itsy bitsy fish bumping into his strong wrists and suddenly losing his footing and disappearing into an ocean so dark it’s almost black. The sea wasn’t an ocean before. The water wasn’t quicksand before. The fish weren’t sharks before. Tommy’s feet used to touch the ground before, so why does he have to frantically flail his legs to keep his nose in the air? _What changed and how did it change so quickly?_

His wrists snap and he feels himself sink into the ocean. He feels sweet relief mixed with horrid guilt bubble in his throat, feeling strangely like a sob threatening to break out. Tommy wouldn’t know.

His vision is swimming and his head is pounding, like someone is pushing his temples so hard his head is caving in on itself. It’s disgusting and Tommy really wants to hear it crack.

It doesn’t. His head doesn’t crack. He swims back up and he lives, just as he always has. He survives. Maybe he doesn’t thrive, but he’s alive and breathing.

He feels something hold onto his snapped wrist, trying to pull him down under the ocean yet again. He looks down. It’s nearly impossible to see with how dark the ocean is, but he can make out the face of a person. And it’s a corpse. A very dead hand and its sickly, crunching bones are holding onto his equally sickly and crunching wrist in an attempt to pull him down. Tommy doesn’t try to fight against it.

It doesn’t matter anyway. The corpse’s body separates from the hand and sinks. It keeps on sinking and sinking and sinking… Tommy averts his gaze from it as it keeps sinking. It’s a victory. He wasn’t the one that sunk. He stayed on top of the water and he’s still alive. But the disgust that was in his throat keeps _growing_ ceaselessly.

He feels cold. It might be the cold of the ocean, it might be the cold of the corpse’s hand. But it’s so cold that Tommy can’t keep his head over the water anymore.

He sinks. He sinks until all he can see his darkness. He sinks until the sharks are gone. He sinks until he passes the corpse that was clinging onto him. He sinks through the sand at the very bottom of the ocean. He sinks so far, he loses his perception of direction.

  


But he doesn’t need to fool himself. His compass has been broken for a long time now.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is a re-upload of a story I had published a few months ago. I had to take it down due to personal reasons but I can publish it again now. Thank you very much for reading and I hope you liked it!


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